USM characterised the World War as one of conflict between capitalist powers and opposed the British entry, with Guy Aldred posing the question: "Why should young men go forward to fight to acquire more territory to be plundered and exploited by American millionaires? Why should they conceive American democracy to be something superior to German Fascism?" The USM also refused to differentiate between the Soviet Union and the Western Allies, holding that the USSR was a capitalist state with the same motivations for war as the other powers and again drawing comparisons between fascism and Stalinism. Following the British government's implementation of Defence Regulation 18B and the expansion of its powers in May 1940, Guy Aldred argued that the regulation had transformed the United Kingdom into a dictatorship. The USM organised its anti-war activities through direct action against any involvement in the military apparatus, with some individual members even considering it a "matter of principle not to possess or carry a gas-mask." The USM collaborated with the APCF and Glasgow Anarchist Federation in the establishment of the No-Conscription League, with Guy Aldred serving as the organisation's chairperson, publishing a pamphlet detailing the rights of conscientious objector and even offering them legal counsel. Some members of the USM including John Taylor Caldwell and Guy Aldred's son Annesley managed to gain unconditional exemption from military service, but others were only able to gain exemption conditional on their return to their workplaces following lengthy court processes and prison sentences. The USM further attacked the CPGB for its inconsistent position on the war, highlighting its abandonment of anti-imperialist class war rhetoric in order to support the war and recalling its earlier support for the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact. The USM under Aldred began to propose a number of alliances during the war, organising alongside Labour Party MPs and many Christian pacifist groups, even printing a number of their articles in the Word. Aldred was particularly criticised by other members of the USM for working with the anti-semitic Scottish Protestant League and the far-right aristocrat Hastings Russell, with articles by both being published in the Word. Aldred even went as far as to propose a "Socialist-Pacifist alliance" that would be led by Russell as "leader of the opposition to the present Government, and so the next Prime Minister." The increasingly heterogenous content of the Word drew marked condemnation, especially for its platforming of Russell, but Aldred defended